Real
by InsideTheFangirlsHead
Summary: One night they decide to draw pictures of one another. Even though the hight of Katniss's drawing ability is gingerbread and stick people. Takes place after Mockingjay but pre-epilogue. Short and Sweet


**My goodness, this is my tenth story (published story, many more are just clogging up the computer).** **They're not all one shots either. Well, I hope you enjoy. This was supposed to be for a fluff challenge, I guess it still is but that's not really its main job…**

**I don't own the Hunger Games !**

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><p>"Why are you awake?" She asked. She was standing in the doorframe. In the room only one very dim light was on even though it was the middle of the night and there wasn't really an measurable amount of light seeping through the cracks in the curtains. Peeta put his paintbrush down on the palette that was full of paints that had yet to be put to use.<br>"I could ask you the same thing." He teases. But he opens his arms, inviting her closer. She accepts his invitation, crossing the floor to Peeta's chair. She sits on his lap, moulding herself to the larger boy. She moves her head slightly to put the paper he was working on in a better light.  
>"What is it going to be?" she asks.<br>"I'm not sure yet." He chuckles. "I was hoping it would come to me."  
>"Oh." she says laying her head on his shoulder. "Well any ideas yet?"<br>"Umm," he mumbles, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her cheek. "I'm not sure."  
>"How can you not be sure?" she asks, wrapping her fingers in his. "You either have it or you don't."<br>"Well I have it. I'm just not sure she'd be willing." he explains, running his thumb over the back of her hand.  
>"Why would she not be willing? Anybody would be lucky to have a painting done by Peeta Mellark." she says, kissing him.<br>"Well would Katniss Mellark consider herself lucky?" he asks. In response she kisses him again and goes to sit on the couch.  
>"Is here okay?" she asks, leaning against the arm of the couch.<br>"Perfect," he tells her_, wherever you are is perfect..._  
>He angles his easel so he can look at her and at his drawing at the same time. "Now, do you want me to draw you like that?" he asks, picking up a pencil.<p>

"No, like this!" she tells him, sticking out her tong and crossing her eyes. He laughs, but at the same time cannot call her face ridiculous, she still looks beautiful to him. She doesn't stay like that; she composes herself and settles for leaning on the arm and erasing the scowl of her now neutral face.

"Now stay still, please." he requests as he puts the pencil lead on the drawing paper. He's decided to draw from the waist up, so he starts there. He mimics the curve of her waist and the texture of the t-shirt that conceals in for the most part. Next are the arms. He runs his pencil down the paper to create the curve of her arm then to the fingers that lay carelessly on the chair arm, playing with a loose string like she does when she runs her fingers through his hair. He does the same with her other arm that flows across her body to meet with the other hand. Her arms have retained the shape that she had when she was younger; the time had not changed much. Next, he drew her torso.

Katniss blushed; she had been watching Peeta's face as he drew and had noticed when his eyes lingered a little longer on her chest than any other part of her body.  
>The face was next after he copied the curvature of her neck. These parts he was trying to get just right, each move of the pencil was slow and deliberate. He did her nose, her cheeks which still had some of the blush left over from earlier. Then the lips, which he has kissed so many times before, then the eyes.<br>When he looked at the eyes, he saw that they were looking back. He saw them light up and he smiled. Making his eyes smile too.

_I love it when he smiles_, thought Katniss from her spot on the couch. She kept on looking at him once his eyes diverted back to the paper. She watched as his eyes followed the pencil, they way his muscles tensed with the minute movements of the pencil, the little crease that formed between his brows as he concentrated. And the way he bit his bottom lip when he surveyed the image on the paper. His eyes flitted back to her once again, very quickly and then he started running the pencil over the drawing. The moves were quick but they were deliberate. He was shading in the portrait.  
>He had been shading in the portrait for a while when she decided to get up from her spot. He continued shading though, as she moved forward. He didn't stop until she'd made him aware of her presence.<br>"

Peeta," she gasped as she looked at the photo. And that's what it was; it didn't seem like an image drawn in the middle of the night by a pencil on a piece of tightly woven cloth. It looked like a photo, an ink on paper, black and white photo. It was _real_. "It's beautiful!"  
>"Well, I didn't need to work to hard on that. It was really a given." he complimented her, reaching for her hand. She took it and placed her other on the paper, tracing the pencil marks that expressed how the artist saw her.<br>"Now I want to draw a picture of you," she told him with a smile. She knew it wouldn't be anywhere near as good as his had been, but she felt like actually doing something rather than sitting around being a model.  
>"Okay," he laughed in agreement, reaching for a sharp pencil and paper to give to her. "Where do you want me to sit?"<br>"You don't really need to do anything, it won't make a difference." She tells him taking the materials. "When the artist's skills stop at stick people, the model doesn't really need to do much."  
>He laughed and moves to the couch anyway so he couldn't see the stick- Peeta that she was creating.<br>Katniss stuck her tong out now in concentration. She wasn't drawing a stick person like she usually would have if she had been asked to draw a person. Instead she was going for a gingerbread man shape. She smiled when she completed the outline with out feeling the need to destroy the picture with the eraser. Seeing her smile Peeta tried to peek, but she backed up, holding the paper to her chest.

"Wait, nosey!" she chided. He leaned back and she went back to work. She started filling in the details. She added some lines on his head for his hair. She added two ears and two eyes. The nose was harder; she tried a few times to get it right but then erased it, deciding picture Peeta didn't need a nose. She places a little half moon smile below where the nose would have been if she would've had the patience to draw it. Then she put a line that indicated where the collar of his shirt was, she did the same half way down each arm for the sleeves. Peeta's shirt was plain so that prevented Katniss from drawing any extra detail. The pants had a design tonight, but they were jut vertical stripes so they didn't really cause that much of an issue.

She didn't draw fingers either, she Knew that her branch-like rendition of fingers would look out of place on the all simple lines of her drawing.  
>When she finished the childlike drawing of Peeta she stretched her arms out in front of her still holding the picture. She was about to give it to Peeta when she suddenly brought it back to her lap. Quickly, before Peeta would peek again she added two things: in his right hand, a loaf of bread that she makes burnt by smudging the lead on top of it. In the left hand she put a paint brush.<p>

"There!" she exclaimed as she finished drawing the little hairs on the paintbrush. She handed it to Peeta and watched his face as he looked at her picture of him. His face broke into a smile and he pulled her towards where he sat on the couch.  
>"Its amazing." he told her as she sat down and snuggled into his side so that she could see the picture too. "Is that the first time you have drawn a gingerbread person?"<br>"It is. It turned out quite well didn't it?" she laughed, looking at her maybe not as realistic rendition of Peeta.  
>"I like the nose." he jokes kissing her hair.<br>"I worked very hard on it." she assures him.  
>"I think with a bit more practice you could be a master!" he predicts.<br>"Would you be my teacher?" she asks.  
>"Why of course. Who else would there be?" he asks turning his head to look at her.<br>"Haymitch." she says with confidence but then laughs. She's pretty sure Haymitch can't draw in a straight line seeing as most of the time he's so intoxicated he can't walk in one. "But I think I'd rather spend more time with you. I like you better than Haymitch."  
>"Well that's reassuring." he says accepting his wife's kiss.<br>"Well it's true," she sighs. "If I could do one thing for the rest of my life it would be spending time with you."  
>"What a coincidence," he tells her. "if I could only do one thing for the rest of my life it would be spending my time with you."<br>"Wasn't that the plan already?" She asks running her finger over his simple wedding band that was identical to hers. The gold bands were flat on top, except for a simple engraving right on top.  
>The sun was peeking through the curtains now, the sliver of light fell across the ring, making shadows and highlighting the word that was branded into the ring.<br>_Real.  
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><p><strong>Awwwwww! Was it fluffy? Tell me with a review! ;)<strong>


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